Life’s been a bit complicated lately…
Hi everyone. Blog/Podcast hiatus is officially over. I have a new podcast that we recorded last week that I should have edited and up sometime tomorrow.
If you enjoy fun and interesting links and use a RSS reader you should consider subscribing to my del.icio.us feed link which I’ll be updating everyday.
Plug this link into your RSS reader: del.icio.us/rss/harryru
All the links will also be published on my sidebar…
David Broza and Wyclef share hummous
Israeli daily Ma’ariv reported today that Israeli guitarist/schlockmeister/perpetual cheese machine David Broza laid down a few tracks with Wyclef Jean for the upcoming Fugees album.
“The connection between myself and Wyclef is very musical” said Broza. “We first came together to compose music for movies. It then evolved into working on the Fugees reunion album. We were working in the studio and suddenly Wyclef said to me ‘Come on up and play a few tracks!’. So I played all sorts of guitar licks. We worked on two tracks and afterwards we all left the studio and listened to the tracks on high volume outside in the street.”
Just last night Ziva and I were sitting on the couch in deep discussion about who is David Broza’s American equivalent.
The conversation went something like this:
Ziva: Billy Joel is the American David Broza.
Harry: No way. Billy Joel may be cheesy but he has written some great songs.
Ziva: When people go to Billy Joel concerts they’re not going because they think it’s cheesy, they are going because they wholeheartedly think he’s good.
Harry: Not in a nostalogic kind of way? Because I think today’s David Broza fans go because of nostalgia.
Ziva: No Harry. They don’t see cheese. They think he’s really good in 2005 as a contemporary artist, not that he had a few hits in the eighties and nineties and is still popular today.
Harry: I believe that Joel is one day going to have a comeback album that is going to blow us all away. Need I remind you of our wedding song “Just the Way you Are?”
Ziva: Harry, that wasn’t our wedding song.
Harry: You’re right. It was David Broza.
Coming together through sport my ass…
It was hard to resist not watching last night’s football match between bitter rivals Betar Jerusalem and Bnai Sakhnin. Yeah, I could have watched Mythbusters test the theory that toothbrushes kept in the bathroom with your toilet absorb airborne fecal matter, but I’ve seen that one before.
Betar, being the traditional team of Israel’s right wing with..ahem…let’s say overzealous fans against Israel’s most successful Arab-Israeli team (which has Jewish players as well). It was a powder keg waiting to explode. Only 300 Betar fans were allowed to attend the game at Bnai Sakhnin’s brand new stadium (paid for by the lovely country of Qatar) but despite the small crowd of Betar fans there were scuffles throughout the game, including Sakhnin fans throwing flares at Betar’s goalie.
It wasn’t until the game ended when the shit really hit the fan. The game ended in a tie and neither the Betar or Sakhnin fans were too happy about it. On last night’s news I heard that the violence began when Bnai Sakhnin fans (who exited the stadium first) began lobbing rocks over the fences at the Betar fans. At that point pretty much all three hundred of the Betar fans stormed the pitch. It was absolute chaos and legions of Betar fans attempted to storm the booth where Channel Ten was interviewing Bnai Sakhnin Captain (and a star player for Israel’s national team) Abbas Suwan. One Betar fan actually managed to break in to the studio and scream at the commentators on live TV.
I read this morning that Gaydamak’s car was vandalized by Sakhnin fans. Both teams’ fans acted in a repulsive manner. Big thumbs down to the 250 police officers who were incapable of controlling the crowds. Like they didn’t anticipate trouble. For real.
There was talk a few months ago that Betar club owner Arkady Gaidamak was interest in signing Suwan to Betar. While the violence was going on one of the commentators says to Suwan, “Perhaps it is too early.” The understatement of the fucking year.
Oh, and toothbrushes kept near the toilet do indeed collect fecal matter, just not enough to be considered harmful.
Attention Israellycool Fans!
Aussie Dave of Israellycool requested that I let everyone know that the Jewish/Israel blog awards are canceled and that he has no longer the desire to blog. That’s why his website is down.
Joking. He doesn’t know why his site is down but until it goes back up he’s blogging at his podcast site which can be found here.
UPDATE: He’s back.
How Israel feels….
Allison Kaplan Sommer sums up remarkably well how the average Israeli is probably feeling right now.
Whether he lives or dies, we are all already in mourning. All of us — those who always like Sharon, those who never liked him, and the vast number of Israelis who once vilified him, but over the past several years have looked in wonderment as he embodied the definition of the word “leader.”Yes, he had flaws, yes, there was scandal, he was far from perfect. But he was a leader. We had a leader. And we no longer do.
There are echoes of the feelings we had ten years ago, when we lost Yitzhak Rabin. Of course, we are not dealing with an assassination this time, with internal violence, with the same level of utter astonishment, with the same depth of national tragedy.
But something very similar is happening on an emotional level, and that is the sense of being in a pit of insecurity stemming from the fact that the country is not really being led at the moment. And we don’t know who our next real leader will be. If you want to get Freudian about it, we’re losing our father figure.
Left-wing or right-wing, even if you felt like men like Yitzhak Rabin or Ariel Sharon were wonderful — or if you felt that they were completely wrong, completely misled, overly violent or completely corrupt, you never doubted for a minute that their absolute top priority was the security and well-being of the State of Israel and its citizens. Every success and every mistake they made flowed from his deep determination to see this country survive, thrive, and succeed. With figures like these as Prime Minister, we felt that there was someone watching over us. And when they vanish suddenly, whether by the hand of an assassin or the fickle hand of fate, it leaves us devastated, deeply insecure and very worried about the future.
And so we worry, watch and wait, unable to let an hour pass without checking the television, radio and Internet. He’s still alive, and that’s great. But it doesn’t really change the fact that on the level that we need Ariel Sharon, we’ve already lost him. Those of us who believe in miracles are praying for one. And those of us who don’t believe in miracles wish that we did.
Read the full post here.
Unconfirmed rumors
I’m apprehensive to post this, but the word is that Ariel Sharon has died. Rumors are floating around everywhere and for all I know (and hope) they are just that…rumors.
Sharon’s final battle?
It’s 6:45 a.m. Ariel Sharon just got out of surgery after a suffering “a significant stroke” late last night. It’s not looking like he is going to make it through this. The radio is full of medical pundits talking about the seriousness of this surgery and it’s not sounding too good. I haven’t heard one positive comment. An update by the doctors at Hadassah hospital is expected in the coming minutes. According to news reports, the PM was treated with injections twice a day to dilute his blood and apparantly a known and feared complication of anticoagulation drugs is intracranial bleeding.
UPDATE 5: The NY Times interviewed Dr. Matthew E. Fink, chief of the Division of Stroke and Critical Care at New York-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center.
The huge stroke suffered last night by Prime Minister Ariel Sharon of Israel, caused by uncontrolled bleeding into the brain, is likely to be devastating and nearly impossible to treat because Mr. Sharon, 77, is taking blood thinners, neurologists say.Although Mr. Sharon was taken to surgery to try to remove the blood pouring into his skull, it was a desperate move, neurologists said.
Hemorrhages in the brain while the patient is taking blood thinners “are usually devastating events,” said Dr. Matthew E. Fink, chief of the Division of Stroke and Critical Care at NewYork-Presbyterian Hospital/Weill Cornell Medical Center. “This sounds really terrible.”
Statistically, the likelihood of death is greater than 80 percent, Dr. Fink said.
“They are trying to save his life with surgery, but this is an extremely hazardous procedure,” Dr. Fink said. “The goal is to save his life, but there is not much evidence that it will preserve neurological function.”
UPDATE 4: Obviously every pundit is now questioning what the political ramifications of Sharon’s stroke. Just heard Meir Sheetrit interviewed on Israel Radio. He emphasized that the Kadima party is not a man but a “way.”
UPDATE 3: 7:05 a.m. A hospital spokesman just said that Sharon is still under general anesthesia and they expect surgery to continue for a few more hours. He said Sharon’s condition is “very serious.”
UPDATE 2: 6:51 a.m. Scratch that, he was just taken back into surgergy after receiving a CT scan.
UPDATE 1: 6:47 Heard something on Channel 10 a few minutes ago about how the blood thinners that Sharon was given after his last surgery might be responsible for this stroke.
I won!
Score! Just won a $25 Visa Gift Card on Blingo due to the diligent searching of someone (Thanks AA!) who signed up through me. I’m quite impressed, not even a week in and I won.
Now I can finally afford that Call of Duty 2 game I’ve been wanting so badly….
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